Down here in Texas, corncobs are very expensive. What if you put the toilet paper (of any type) in something like a small diaper genie and didn't put it into the black tank at all? Do you think that is simply going TOO excessive? I'm asking for a "friend" of mine.

Ok its official. I am not usin the corn cobs but did go ahead and just buy rv paper. It was about the same price and regular so I figured I would just do that. I am still lovin all the comments here though.

Back when I was a young boy we lived close to a mill that made feed for animals as well as flour and corn meal and there were always a constant mound of corn cobs behind the mill it was one of my daily chores as a young boy to take our push cart to the mill and get a load of corn cobs.
Each night along with cutting fire wood and hauling in coal I would bring in a bucket of corn cobs that I had soaked in kerosene, we would use the cobs to start a fire in the fire place or wood/coal stove and one could get a good roaring hot fire going real quick by just using the cobs.

I guess in those days we had many uses for the corn cobs, they were not always used at the out house with the sears and Roebuck catalogs.

Bounder Boy - 8/22/2010 5:39 PM I was told by my RV mechanic than any type/brand that sayes "septic safe" is good to use. No sense paying extra just because it says, "RV" on it.

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I actually don't agree with that.....in your RV...you do NOT have a septic tank. You have a HOLDING tank.

Do this yourself...take a sheet ofyour standard TP and a sheet of RV paper. Have 2 glasses of water...put the TP in each glass and see what happens..I belive you will see the RV TP dissolve.....and that is what you want to happen in a HOLDING tank.

The RV black tank does in fact act very much like the early stages of a septic system and has exactly the same actions. There is no need for use of any special RV toilet paper other than to help the bottom line of those who sell it. Septic safe TP is what the vast majority of fulltimers use and it is basically the same thing as the so called special RV paper. It don't have quite as nice a label and it has not been repackaged by one of the RV supply companies, but not one of the RV papers is actually made by that company who's brand it wears. After ten years of living fulltime in the same RV, I use generous amounts of water and Scott's septic safe TP and it works just fine, as does any of the septic safe papers.

I have done a lot of study on this question and the first stage of septic action is liquefying, which takes about 48 hours to reach 80%. The addition of chemicals and buying expensive TP has little or no improvement on that time. Talk to any septic engineer and they can tell you this as well. Septic tanks have two sections, the first is where things change to a liquid, the second is where the longer process takes place. Even that takes less than a week for things to process.If you take the trouble to go and look at a new septic tank you will discover that all they are is a very large tank with a divider midway across to prevent any solids from spilling into the second chamber. The inlet is in the first chamber and the outlet to the leach field is from the second. The difference from your black tank is that it has more time to make sure that everything is liquid before it leaves that tank.

The reason that you never dump the black tank without it half or more full is to carry out the left over solids that will always be in there, when the system is in use. Waste your money if you wish to buy that special stuff, but all it really does is lighten your wallet.